3. The war news on all fronts was uniformly bad in December 1941
Churchill’s maps revealed a war situation that was grim. In the Pacific, the Japanese continued to thrust forward, conveying troops and aircraft across vast distances to strike seemingly everywhere at once. British forces receded in Southeast Asia, the Dutch East Indies were being swept up. American forces were besieged on Wake Island, Guam had fallen. The Pacific Fleet was incapable of countering the Japanese. For decades, American strategy in the Pacific had been based on the battleships destroyed at Pearl Harbor. Both the United States and Britain lacked the airplanes to contend with the Japanese thrusts. Australia faced the very real threat of invasion. So did India, via Burma. Yet both leaders soon agreed the key to winning the war was the defeat of Nazi Germany. It reinforced an agreement they had forged at Argentia Bay earlier in the year.
That agreement had been made aboard the battleship HMS Prince of Wales. The Japanese sank the battleship earlier in December during the defense of the Malay Peninsula by the British. Prince of Wales had been a sister ship of Duke of York, and Churchill undoubtedly thought of its loss during his voyage to America. Yet he remained unwavering in his commitment to the destruction of Germany as the main thrust of the Allied cause. The two leaders main concern centered on the third major Allied leader who, though not present, loomed over their discussions. In December 1941, the German army stood at the very gates of Moscow, though winter had bogged down their advance. Roosevelt and Churchill were determined to keep Joseph Stalin from making a separate peace with the Germans. Concentrating on Germany first was the result of that determination.